For the longest of time, the shattered Vree battle saucer tumbled through the night alone, the latest victim of the Drakh scourge that had now moved on to attract the attention of other warriors and other starship commands...including Matthew Gideon's EXCALIBUR. And then, rather suddenly, it wasn't, as a very special warship emerged from hyperspace and faded from sight, its skin blending into the endless night around it as an outcast's hand engaged the Vorlon-based stealth technology laced through its outer skin.
A few moments passed, moments in which the crew of the new arrival made their preparations to investigate the wreck. And then, without any warning, the skin of the ship smoothly pulled apart into two egress points near the port and starboard secondary batteries, and a small transport emerged, followed quickly by a fighter, both of which slowly and carefully made their way over to the wreck. The pilots of those craft had been sent to find a very specific object, and once that object was found, suspicions could be proven, reinforcing a decision that had already been made.
And soon enough, both arrived at their destination, latched onto it, and after another moment's pause, the pilots made their way inside.
* * *
Azhahk Fenric shook his head in exasperation, as together with the junior Ranger Operations Officer Larieken had assigned to him, he moved down the steeply curved, tilted corridor of the Vree warship towards whatever remained of its bridge, a task that wasn't made any easier by the wreck's two-axis tumble.
Despite the rubble and bodies floating in their way, he had no trouble navigating his way through the interior, of course. From the beginning, Azhahk had chosen to memorize the deck plans of as many Alliance warships as he could manage, just for this reason. Too many times in the past decade, it had been the job of Rangers to help rescue crews from wrecks like this one...or, to reclaim bodies from places where no one else could walk.
Or *should*.
And recordings, of course. Which was, this day, the reason *Iltrakar* Larieken had sent him over here with his...companion. Azhahk sighed, then; it wasn't his place to complain, for it was the duty of senior crew to help train the younger and more inexperienced...and that described Anla'shok Courtney Ellis right down to the roots of her unruly cap of blonde hair.
At the top of her cadre right from the beginning, Courtney had come straight out of graduation parade at Tuzanor almost two weeks before, and had immediately been hustled onto a shuttle enroute to the SHARD OF NIGHT. There hadn't even been time for her to say goodbye to her parents and brother, who had come to Minbar to see her graduation parade...and now, it was all too likely she wouldn't see them again for months, if not years!
Azhahk's mouth tightened, then. All things considered, it had been luck that had brought the Ellis family to the Minbari homeworld at that time and for that reason. Courtney's parents had managed to miss the Drakh attack on Earth, and as such, were part of the small percentage of humanity that did *not* have the plague at the moment. His parents had also been lucky; they'd been on Luna visiting with some of his extended clan when the attack had occured. But so many *other* relatives back on the harsh shores of the Arabian Gulf had not been so lucky.
Too many, and the clock was ticking. First, however, there was a need to find the remaining units of the fleet that had done this to Earth. The Drakh had started the war, but now it was the task of Earthforce and the Rangers to finish it.
Decisively, if possible.
Azhahk shook himself out of his reverie, then, as just ahead of him, Courtney Ellis entered the bridge and promptly shuddered, a shudder he could see even through her pressure suit, as she saw the dozen or so frozen, drifting dead Vree in the dark and silent chamber.
"While you may not think this, at the moment." he firmly informed her, "You *will* survive this experience, I assure you."
"You make it sound so easy." his companion shakily replied, as she turned to meet his gaze, her eyes showing some small fear. "I've never seen so many bodies in one place before..."
"Do not complain." he warned her, as he made his way around the completely destroyed captain's station towards the goal at hand. "It was you, Anla'shok Ellis, who chose to follow the call of your heart and come to Tuzanor to become one of us. It was you who chose to study beneath Sech Westcastle and her mentor, F'hursna Sech Durhan, and *you* who chose to become the best of your group at what we do. The Entil'zha notices such things...and as such, joined you with the rest of Val'na Tikopai's crew on this...mission of ours.
If you had not wanted to face your fears, you would have done none of these things. Do I, or do I not, speak the truth on this matter?"
"You've been hanging around the Minbari too much..." Ellis observed, her eyes narrow. "Like them, you seem to have turned the use of the cold truth into an art form."
Azhahk shrugged, as he reached down around the Vree body slumped at the bridge point he had been looking for. "Perhaps some of their ways have rubbed off on me in the time I have been a Ranger. When you serve at their side for as long as I have, their ways become our ways."
"I'll believe *that* when it happens." the younger woman muttered.
Azhahk laughed. "Have it your way, then. You will learn the truth of our path, in due course."
"Look, have you found it yet?"
"Of course." he replied, lifting up the message crystal between thumb and finger for her to see, before gently squeezing the comm toggle switch on the left palm of his pressure suit. "Anla'shok Fenric to SHARD OF NIGHT."
"Your report, Mr. Fenric?" the voice of his Captain returned down the link...cool and composed, as seemed to be the norm for her.
"We've managed to locate the crystal, and are now ready to download its contents. Although, I must admit, I have no doubt as to who the perpetrators were."
"The more evidence we can collect, the better. Sooner or later, the Drakh *will* be brought to heel, and if we can bring their leaders before a war crimes tribunal..."
Azhahk snorted; now *that* was a big if. "As you say, Captain. Downloading now."
* * *
"We're only a handful of kilometres away from them..." Julia mused, as she casually reclined in her chair and watched the small Vree squadron clustered around the wreck. "And they can't see us at all...or at least, that's what we should hope!"
"And well it is that they cannot." Klairika critically observed. "In the orientation it now possesses, the whisker array gave us very little warning of the imminent jumpout of the Vree saucers and their command ship."
"Don't blame the system, ladies..." Dawson retorted from the engineering station, in between his XO and the holographic imager that filled the center of the bridge's rear hemisphere. "Without a nearby jumpgate to bounce messages off of, we're limited by how much information we can pass between the realspace and hyperspace elements of the grid until the tachyon relay link kicks in on the nearest gate ...which should be any time now. And in any case, we were never really in danger of being discovered, now were we?"
"Engineer Dawson is correct in his assessment." Larieken added a moment later, as he finished a background check on the whisker net and turned to face his superiors. "When the Vree arrived, Ms. Ellis and her craft had already entered the hangar, and Mr. Fenric was able to engage his fighter's darklight mode without any difficulty as the Vree jump point opened."
"Still..." Julia added, "If we'd only been a *little* slower, the Vree would have found Fenric and his companion aboard their wrecked saucer, and I don't think I want to have anyone finding ouut that we exist that easily, especially the Vree. The Drakh have spies everywhere..."
"Although it is unlikely that there are Vree among them." Klairika said. "The Conglomerate took losses in the Shadow War comparable to those in my people's navy, and the Vree have long memories for such things."
"While we..." Dawson added caustically, "Have longer memories of the Vree."
"Mr. Dawson...they did apologize for that, you know. Numerous times, I might add." At that point, Klairika's board chimed at her, and the Brakiri glanced down, and allowed herself a small smile. "Ah. At last! Val'na, we have now established a tachyon link with the nearest transfer gate. The hyperspace whiskers are downloading their reports...now."
"Show me." Julia commanded, as she straightened in her seat; now, they would finally be able to learn what the current 'big' picture was. "Let's see what the Drakh are up to."
A holographic bubble sprang into being in front of them, and rapidly expanded to depict the zones of influence of all the major Alliance races, as well as some of the 'fringe' zones within the former Vorlon and Shadow territories, together with the sectors toward the 'Rim' of known space. A moment later, the major ship battlegroup locations shimmered into view as well, including the brilliant red icon depicting the present location of the EXCALIBUR.
"As you can see," Klairika continued, "The Drakh seem to have pulled back from their hit and run strikes along the Alliance member borders, and have consolidated most of their remaining field strength into several battlegroups. The group that we observed approaching the EXCALIBUR would appear to have been destroyed...as you noted previously, a small group, and not worth our attention.
Another squadron appears to have concealed itself...'gone to ground', as you would say, Val'na. The third group, however, *is* something to be concerned about. It is now moving back towards Earth-controlled space, and within another twelve standard hours, will be nearing the Rimward-facing colonies of the Earth Alliance, one of which they will, no doubt, attack."
"Do they not realize that the Earth military is waiting for them to try just such a thing?" Larieken incredulously inquired. "While they do not have our advantage in observation, the outer commands will no doubt have dispersed spyships far and wide, waiting for the Drakh to appear. And as soon as they do so, the human capital ships will descend..."
Julia shook her head, her dark eyes full of both exhaustion and the occasional flash of unwanted wisdom. "I don't think it's quite that simple, Larieken. The group we can *see* is probably acting as bait for the Earthforce commands. And once they engage, that stealthed Drakh group might jump on them from behind..."
"And Earthforce, at this moment, cannot afford to take further losses, given the number of destroyers they lost at Earth." Klairika pointed out. "Drakh vessels, both light and capital, are both more maneuverable then most human destroyer-class capital ships and more heavily armed for their size, which is, I will note, a liability your engineers have *yet* to correct."
"We're working on it, damnit." Dawson growled from the back. "Just give us a little *more* time."
"We don't have time, and neither do they. Klairika...the status of the Vree, if you please?"
"They would appear to have secured the wreck beneath the attending capital ship...their group is beginning to move off, and should be jumping shortly."
"Then we should do the same. We've got the information we came here for, now it's time for us to go and pay the Drakh a visit, I think."
"Best guess for Drakh group Three's intercept point with the nearest large Earthforce battlegroup. I want to be there *ahead* of the Drakh, by the way. And just in case we were wrong about them not having any more of this plague..."
Klairika nodded, briefly checked on the locations of the Earthforce units in the projected image, and then crisply issued an order to the Minbari at the helm. "I understand; we will be getting underway shortly. *You*, also, should be getting underway, to somewhere other then here. You've now been on the bridge for a shift and a half..."
"Hmm." she muttered, as she rose to her feet and stretched, even as the SHARD swept away from the Vree, unnoticed. "Has it been that long, already? How time flies when you're having fun."
"You will have to explain to me," Klairika noted in passing, as Julia left the bridge, "Just how it is your word 'fun' seems to have so many different definitions."
* * *
Quarters Deck...a short time later.
Smiling a smile that was almost a snarl, the engineer began giving the maintenence panel in front of him a short but critical sequence of commands, a sequence given to him by his associates, and approved of by his...other associates. His friend had not responded as he had hoped, and a message needed to be sent, both in Rakele's memory and also for *other* reasons. Reasons only he needed to know.
Dawson had, the engineer decided, shown how foolish he was when he had allowed him to come on board. But then, he'd been all alone with the Minbari for a time, hadn't he? And besides the Rangers aboard, had wanted some 'friendly' faces around, friendly being human.
The engineer had, of course, passed muster. His record had seemed exemplary, but the truth was not always what it seemed. And there were things about the SHARD OF NIGHT he knew, courtesy of his new associates; things that Dawson would learn only when it was too late.
For now, though, before the mission progressed any further, it was time to deal with the Drazi. And despite what his 'friend' had said, and what he had said in reply, the engineer had decided to do it *his* way. The spoken sequence now complete, the engineer added one more sentence...the critical one, all things considered.
A sentence that drove deep into the heart of the ship's environmental grid, rewriting one very critical part of its programming...and also commanded control of several other, almost as critical functions, in relation to his intended target.
* * *
Deep in thought, Sheynell wandered the midships corridors of the SHARD, and tried to figure out what it was she had felt when they had jumped out on the Vree wreck...and also, to figure out *why* she'd opened herself up like that, when she had.
It had been *years* since she'd been so careless. Years she'd spent honing herself into a icy, emotionless blade beneath Bester...and then unlearning most of what she'd learned, first at Tuzanor and then working beneath Montoya. And yet...most things she had done in her life, especially with her telepathy, had been for good reasons!
And she had caught something, after all. Something potentially troubling; something that she wasn't willing to discuss with the rest until she had more proof. During that moment of openness, she'd sensed a wrongness aboard, a icy mind at odds with the rest of the crew. And unless she was completely out to lunch, unlikely after what she'd been through to reach this point, the owner of that mind intended ill towards at least one and possibly more members of the crew. And now, despite many line-of-sight surface scans during her wandering, it was obvious that he'd gone to ground.
Suddenly somber, she shook her head irritably; only now did she realize which parts of her had grown soft since she'd claimed sanctuary with the Alliance. The officer of the Corps she had been would have latched onto that mind and seized it without the slightest hesitation.
The question was, could she take the best elements of her training and use it to track this ill-intentioned crewmember down, before he could unleash his intent?
It was then, of course, that a sudden spasm of mental fear reached her from nearby, and her musings forgotten, Sheynell sprang into a run, almost knocking down a pair of off-duty junior personnel in her haste. Damn it all!...but she *had* hesitated, hadn't she? And now, if what she was sensing was the truth, she had hesitated too long.
Because it looked like the mysterious someone had already made his first move...
* * *
For a time, he had slept, and then he had meditated...and now, it was time to begin his shift. Dasouri allowed himself to smile grimly as he gazed out on the shimmering wrack of hyperspace. Before he had gone off duty, they had been in the early stages of approaching a wrecked Vree battlesaucer. Evidently the Val'na had found what she wanted, and they were now enroute... elsewhere.
Undoubtedly, they would meet up with the Drakh in due course. Again, Dasouri sighed, before gritting his teeth. Again, he considered the relative conundrum of fighting as a Ranger to help bring peace to his people. It was something he had yet to resolve in his mind, even after he had spoken to the doctor about it, some hours before their departure from Minbar. Something that was...
Wait. He rose to his feet, sensing a wrongness around him. What was going on? What was...
Suddenly, his vision shimmered, and Dasouri realized, both in amazement and near-horror, that the air in his quarters was starting to become quite unbreathable, and drew in a last lungful of more-or-less good air before things got any worse. Why hadn't he noticed this earlier? Dasouri realized, belatedly, that he already knew the answer to that question. He'd allowed himself to be distracted by pointless retreading of the path already travelled, yet again.
And now *this* had happened. There was no time to waste; precious seconds were passing, and the reserve of clean air within his lungs was becoming ever more depleted, but even so, he found it impossible not to debate the points at hand. Engineer Dawson had assured him that the ship's environmental systems were more advanced then almost any other ship in existence. Why, then, was the oxygen in this chamber rapidly being replaced with something apparently far more deadly?
No matter, he told himself, as he tapped at the door override, not, for the moment, wishing to speak for fear of inhaling more of the noxious poison that the quarter's atmosphere had become. Once he was outside, he would track Dawson down, and resolve the problem to his satisfaction...
And felt a stab of fear pass through him, when absolutely nothing happened, and another when he realized the comm systems were also nonfunctional. Dasouri sank to the floor then, his vision becoming ever more blurry, and came to the conclusion that this could not simply be an accident of some sort. Someone aboard the SHARD OF NIGHT meant him ill...someone with sufficient engineering qualifications to poison his air, lock the door to his quarters, and make communication to the rest of the ship impossible.
All without warning the other engineers that something was not *right*.
Which implied a conspiracy at the highest level. And also implied that unless someone came to see him in the next several minutes, the air in his lungs would run out.
And he would then be quite dead.
Wait. Dasouri's brow furrowed, and a glimmer of hope began to form. There was an admittedly slim chance that the telepath, Sheynell Keynes, had detected his problem. Very slim, all things considered...but it was all the hope he had.
Focusing his mind, he then thought, as hard as he could, the only word that mattered...
* * *
Even had she *not* used the computer to trace the fastest path to Dasouri's quarters, Sheynell knew that she could have reached his door almost as quickly in any case, given the bright beacon of the Drazi's fear against the general mental background around her. And as she came to a halt, it was clear there was no time to waste, no time at all. Bright in his mind was the knowledge of being trapped in an area with no oxygen, and having no means of escape and no communication with the outside world...
At which point, Dasouri's mind suddenly shimmered, and a single word emerged onto the surface, a word she could easily detect at this range. A word obviously intended for her.
<HELP>
"Computer!" she crisply proclaimed. "This is Anla'shok Keynes; override and open the door to Dasouri's quarters!"
"Your command password is required for entry into personal space." the ship's computer informed her.
"Understood. *Dark Angel*." she whispered, so only the computer could hear. The door sprang open, and she turned away involuntarily, as a wave of noxious fumes quite obviously having nothing to do with air emerged from Dasouri's quarters to be whisked away, followed promptly by the Drazi himself, who drew in a deep and obviously needed lungful of oxygen before collapsing at her feet, which then drew the attention of the handful of crew who happened to be nearby.
"Anla'shok Keynes!" the nearest, a Minbari, began, as he arrived at a run, several more Rangers close behind. "Can we aid you?"
"You can." she replied, casting a quick glance down at the unconscious, but otherwise unharmed Drazi at her feet. "Take him to Physician Veyshahk's domain, and I shall join you there shortly."
The Minbari nodded tersely, his nose wrinkled at the remnant foulness of what had emerged from the rooms in front of him. "It shall be as you say."
And then, even as the Minbari and his companions departed at a run, Dasouri slung between their arms, Sheynell cautiously stuck her head
into the place where this had all began, and her mouth tightened.
For the air, as far as she could tell...was now *quite* breathable, indeed.
* * *
Medical Section; a short time later.
"Mr. Dawson!" Julia exclaimed, as she slowly paced back and forth in front of her sullen chief engineer, "One of my senior staff was nearly, as far I can determine, poisoned in his own quarters. Do not *presume* to tell me that this is impossible, because unless Sheynell is lying to us, and Dasouri managed to poison himself somehow, it did happen!"
Dawson took a deep breath, and forced himself to calm down a little. "Okay...maybe I didn't phrase that as good as I could have. Captain, all I'm trying to say is this: when Varsak designed this ship, he put so many redundancies into the system that something like this should have been detected almost immediately!"
"And yet, it quite *obviously* was not." Sheynell cut in, as a short distance away, a grim-faced Veyshahk tended to the still unconscious Dasouri. "Not only was the air in his quarters being rapidly replaced by something quite lethal when I rescued him, but his door had been locked, *and* communication to the rest of the ship overriden. If I hadn't been in the area and detected his distress..."
"The end result would have been, shall we say, unpleasant." Veyshahk finished for her. "If his exposure to the toxins had been even a little longer, he would not now be recovering in this facility...he would, instead, be *dead*."
"Mr. Dawson." Julia ground out, her face, Nicholas noted, now *dangerously* icy. "I will be plain with you; it is quite clear to me that there's someone aboard this ship who was responsible for this act of cruelty and ill intent towards one of *my* Rangers...a saboteur, if you will. It is also obvious that this individual would appear to have some small knowledge of the ship's systems, for he or she could not have done this to Dasouri, otherwise.
Your task is as follows: you are to find and elliminate this individual's access to the computer system, and then, the means by which this was brought about. And having done that, you will then assist my tactical officer and her staff in locating and detaining the one who has done this.
We have only just begun this mission...and to have disaster strike so openly, so early in its progression, is unacceptable and will *not* be tolerated. Do I make myself absolutely, crystal clear, Mr. Dawson?"
He straightened to attention at that point, a position he remembered all too well from his days of serving beneath Varsak. "You do...Captain."
"Saying the words and proving them true are two different things." she warned him, the flame of her anger still held in check, for the time being. "I want results."
"We'll find him, Captain." he promised. "Have no doubt of that."
"You'd better."
And with that said, his captain left the room, and Nicholas expelled a sigh of relief before turning towards a still-serious Sheynell. "Damn!" he began. "For a moment there, I thought she was going to take my hide off!"
"She still might." the telepath mused, "If you fail in the task she has given you."
"There's some days, you know..." he muttered, "When I don't know if taking this job was such a hot idea."
"Nicholas..." Sheynell told him, "The moment will come when you realize the choice you made was the correct one."
"I think I'm going to need some proof on that score." he sourly replied.
"You'll get it." she told him, as they left med-section, and continued down the corridor together. "Sooner then you may believe...or like."
* * *
Sinzar system. Earthforce Destroyer HELENA.
Even after all the days since it had happened, Captain Randall Carpenter, like so many other commanders now exiled from his family, his love and everyone he knew, could not escape from the thoughts that haunted him...the 'what if's' that controlled his every waking moment. What if they had turned away from their ordered patrol sooner then they had? What if he had pushed harder to reach Earthspace? Could he have made a difference?
The questions were easy to produce, but the answers were now forever denied to him. Again and again, Carpenter's thoughts had strayed to the moment when the HELENA had jumped into Earthspace and passed through the shattered rubble the Drakh had left behind them, and he and his crew had beheld the Earth shrouded in a dark pall of death. It was then of course, that the Joint Chiefs of Staff, both infected and otherwise, had passed on the order to pursue the Drakh and make them pay for what had happened both to humanity and to the Earth.
Now, Earthforce battlegroups patrolled the outer ranges hunting for the Drakh, and every once in a while, or so he had heard, they had managed to find a few of the enemy. Sometimes those stragglers had been easy to kill, and other times, they had fought like demons, managing to destroy human ships far larger then their own.
But as of yet, they hadn't managed to track down whatever remained of their main force, despite some dedicated searching on the part of some of the fleet captains. Carpenter didn't believe that the Drakh had committed their entire main force to the attack, and thus, the wait continued for the enemy to make their next move.
And then, quite suddenly, the wait was over, and the time to act had come, as the familiar warning chime of a jump surge rang through his bridge.
"Commander!" he barked out, turning to face the woman who had served at his side for the past eight years, through thick and thin. "Is it them?"
Commander Michelle Anleiah nodded, her face showing the worry that most of his crew felt...even himself. "Yes, sir. There's a medium sized Drakh fleet carrier emerging from hyperspace beyond Sinzar's outer moon." She paused for a moment, and then, her eyes hardened. "They've launched half-a-dozen recon vessels. Those will be in range in twenty-one minutes. Mark."
"Bring us to battle stations, then, Commander, and prepare to accelerate to pursuit speed." he ordered. "That's the largest recon force we've seen since the battle for Earth, and at least part of their main force may be close behind. Get our Thunderbolt squadrons in space, and get me a link to Captain ap Glydden."
"Launching now, sir. And as for the link, coming online...
Now."
* * *
EAS CIRCE, enroute to Sinzar.
"It would appear," Elaine mused, as Commander Daele stood at her right elbow, awaiting the command he knew would come, "That our intelligence reports were right for once. The Drakh seem to be in the process of committing part of their main force to an attack against another of our holdings."
"That would seem to be the case, yes." Daele rumbled, his face stern. "And as the reports suggested, Sinzar is that target. Perhaps they believe it unprotected, since we only have one destroyer on station...perhaps they think to emulate what the Minbari did to that colony during our war with them, more then twenty years ago. In any case, Captain, that line of thinking will be their undoing, this day."
"That's what I'd like to think, Winslow, yes. We'll allow the Drakh commander to get close enough to the colony that he's committed to the path...and then, we'll jump on them from behind, and engage their commander on two fronts."
"An admirable plan, Captain." Daele noted. "Let's just hope there are no other surprises waiting in store for us."
* * *
Drakh main battlegroup, fifteen minutes from jumpout.
"The advance group begs leave to report, Vekh'shivalht," Raeznon informed her captain, "That one human destroyer is present at the human world Sinzar."
"One..." Palakz mused, the claws of his left hand tightened into a fist. "Curious, that is. Have the humans lost so many ships at Earth that they can only afford minimal protection at their outer holdings? If so, our victory will be swift and complete. But if not..."
"I, too, have noted the possibility that this may be a trap set by the humans." Raeznon darkly noted. "They, like some of the Entire, now also feel the need for revenge. We must be careful..."
Palakz hissed, and Raeznon fell silent. "Be careful what you say, my Vaarliht! It is sometimes difficult to tell how much we are valued by the Entire, and watchers may be everywhere -- even here, on our command-bridge. I lead this force, and act on the orders passed down from our Council...and yet, sometimes it is unclear who are the players and who are the pawns in this game we play with the enemy. And do we pursue this war at the expense of our race's continued existence?"
"I do not know the answers to your questions," Raeznon admitted. "But perhaps we will discover those answers in due course."
Palakz nodded at her answer, his expression forbidding. "Perhaps. In any case, our task is clear for the moment, Raeznon. The human world awaits, and the battle before us.